Dr. Morales is an economist at the Center for U.S. Studies
(CESEU) at
the University of Havana. In 2007 he mounted an attack
in Jiribilla (El
tema racial y la subversión anticubana) and Cuba Debate on NED funded exiles who are criticizing Cuba
on racial issues He also issued abundant writings that could
scarcely be accused of sugar coating Cuba's race problems. In fact, his
385 page report published in 2008 by Cuba's Editorial de Ciencias
Sociales, Desafíos de la problemática racial en Cuba (The Challenges of the Racial Problem in
Cuba), is cited extensively on all sides, even in the Acting on Our Conscience Briefing
written in support of Cuban "black civil rights" dissidents.

Dr. Morales wrote an article on corruption in Cuba, Corruption:
The true counter-revolution?, which was published on the UNEAC site in
April, 2010, but was then subsequently taken down. On June 28th, 2010, the Havana Times
stated that Dr.
Morales was expelled from the Communist Party as a result of this
article. Those commenting this
event, both on the
left and the right, don't usually mention his extensive record of working on issues
of race in Cuba, which is not seen as a factor in his case.

Esteban Morales has been criticized for his equivocal role in 1)
Rolando Rodriguez' spirited
defense of the 1912 Cuban Republic against the Independents of
Color, who were massacred and 2)
Roberto Zurbano's takedown trial by the Cuban media. However,
he is widely recognized as having produced a prodigious amount of
valued research on "el tema," anti-racism. He is a member of the
Comisión Aponte and is
using that anti-racism platform to further the struggle.

Some of Esteban Morales' writings
prior to 2011:
See
Articles/Articulos for
later articles

Corruption:
The true counter-revolution? 4/21/2010 Progreso: "Without
a doubt, it is becoming evident that there are people in positions of
government and state who are girding themselves financially for when the
Revolution falls, and others may have everything almost ready to transfer
state-owned assets to private hands, as happened in the old USSR. Fidel
said that we ourselves could put an end to the Revolution and I tend to
think that, among other concerns, the Commander in Chief was referring to
the questions relative to corruption. Because this phenomenon, already
present, has continued to appear in force. If not, see what has happened
with the distribution of lands in usufruct in some municipalities around
the country: fraud, illegalities, favoritism, bureaucratic slowness, etc.
In reality, corruption is a lot more dangerous than the so-called domestic
dissidence. The latter is still isolated; it lacks an alternative program,
has no real leaders, no masses. But corruption turns out to be the true
counter-revolution, which can do the most damage because it is within the
government and the state apparatus, which really manage the country's
resources."

New
book focuses on racial issues in Cuba - Its author, Esteban Morales,
scrutinizes the topic of race relations in the island from colonial times
to present day. 2/4/2008 Cuba Now: "Economist,
political scientist and essayist Esteban Morales Domínguez has repeatedly
stated, in several articles and interviews, that lack of cultural
knowledge and ignorance, among other factors, have played an important
role in helping silencing and omitting racial issues in Cuba, rendering
the topic unworthy of public debate. The publication of his book,
Challenges posed by racial issues in Cuba, recently launched at Fernando
Ortiz Foundation in downtown Havana, has opened one more space to fight
back apathy and indifference, thus promoting awareness among those who
still consider that the Negro issue does not call for assessments or
scrutiny."

Letter quoted in: James Early:
Carlos Moore's Outcast Vision and Dangerous Deceit 12/28/2008 CubaNews: "As
I've previously mencioned, Moore and others are part of a recent trend to
claim that Obama's election is some kind of threat to Cuba because Obama
is Black and because, supposedly, this means that Cuban government can no
longer say that the United States is racist. As I've mentioned more than
once before, Cuba DOES continue to have racial problems, but they are both
nothing compared to the racial problem which are widespread in the United
States. Their origins and nature are quite different and it's
extraordinarly disingenuous to try to conflate them as the group of people
such as Carlos Moore, the Miami Herald, and others, all of whom have a
long history of hostility toward the revolutionary government in Cuba,
have been trying to do." James Early is on the Board of
Directors of TransAfrica Forum.

So far, there has not been much comment on the fact that while many have criticized
the corruption in Cuba, it is only the leading researcher on race in Cuba who is
singled out for punishment. They refer to him as a specialist on US affairs.

Cuba
Communists want member expelled for essay 7/6/2010 AP: "Esteban
Morales, a historian who has long written on race and relations with the
United States, was ordered removed by a party committee in Havana's Playa
district, said Pedro Campos, a former Cuban diplomat who once worked as a
researcher under Morales at the University of Havana's Center for the
Study of the United States. But grass-roots party members in Playa said
they considered the committee's action too harsh and rejected it, and
Morales said he would appeal the sanctions, according to Campos. Neither
the party nor Morales have commented on the case, and it was unclear if
Morales has been formally removed from the party yet."

Cuba Needs
Dialogue without Sectarianism 6/27/2010 Havana Times: "Recently,
after he published an article warning of the danger posed by State
corruption to the Revolution, the noted revolutionary communist and
intellectual Dr. Esteban Morales —a black man who is perhaps our most
accomplished specialist in US affairs— disappeared from the Mesa Redonda
[“The Round Table,” a daily evening news commentary program shown on
almost all channels in Cuba]. He had traditionally participated on that
program when issues related to the US were dealt with. In that same vein,
Party activists have also been fired from their jobs or had their e-mail
addresses and accounts withdrawn for spreading ideas about participative
socialism. Other acts of harassment to which people have been subjected, I
prefer not to disclose here, for many reasons."

Esteban
Morales Booted from Cuba’s Communist Party 6/28/2010 Havana
Times: "Esteban Morales, PhD., has been “separated from the
ranks” of the Communist Party of Cuba (PCC) for his publication of an
article denouncing what he considers the counter-revolutionary corruption
and bureaucracy that exists in the country. The Playa Municipal Committee
of the PCC communicated its decision to the grassroots level of the
Party."

Corruption:
The true counter-revolution? 4/21/2010 Progreso: by
Esteban Morales "Without
a doubt, it is becoming evident that there are people in positions of
government and state who are girding themselves financially for when the
Revolution falls, and others may have everything almost ready to transfer
state-owned assets to private hands, as happened in the old USSR. Fidel
said that we ourselves could put an end to the Revolution and I tend to
think that, among other concerns, the Commander in Chief was referring to
the questions relative to corruption. Because this phenomenon, already
present, has continued to appear in force. If not, see what has happened
with the distribution of lands in usufruct in some municipalities around
the country: fraud, illegalities, favoritism, bureaucratic slowness, etc.
In reality, corruption is a lot more dangerous than the so-called domestic
dissidence. The latter is still isolated; it lacks an alternative program,
has no real leaders, no masses. But corruption turns out to be the true
counter-revolution, which can do the most damage because it is within the
government and the state apparatus, which really manage the country's
resources."

SMITH, Wayne S, and
Esteban MORALES DOMINGUEZ, ed -
Subject to Solution: Problems in US-Cuban Relations. (Boulder and London:
Lynne Rienner Publishers) xvi,158 pages 24 cm hb, biblio, index, 1988.
International relations.
United States
.
Cuba
. The result of a series of meetings between US and Cuban scholars organized by
Johns Hopkins U and U of Havana in 1985, 86, and 87

Esteban Morales Domínguez
Professor of Economics and
Political Science at the University of Havana

(This is a summary of Desafíos
de la problemática racial en Cuba, Editorial de Ciencias Sociales,
La Habana, 2008. This article originally appeared in Spanish
in Temas No. 56, octubre-diciembre, 2008, pp. 95-99. The book is
presently being translated for publication in English.)

There are very few contemporary
writings on the subject of race in this country, and the ones that do
exist are by-and-large found in magazines, especially in Temas
and Catauro[1]
There has been more publications abroad dealing with the subject on a
contemporary basis. Aline Helg, Alejandro de la Fuente, and Carlos Moore
are noteworthy for their extensive research. But none of them share the
vicissitudes of daily life in Cuba with us, and this can be seen in
their writings, even though they make notable contributions, whether or
not we might share some of their opinions.

This situation tells us that in addition to
the difficulties associated with this subject within present-day Cuban
society – something we will deal with later – we have in effect
handed over to them the task of analyzing a problem of vital importance
in the country’s life, with the resultant danger that – in response
– we find ourselves having to clarify matters about which we have
still not been able to have a scientific discussion of our own.
Therefore, it is of prime importance that we try to work out our own
vision, from the Island, of the racial problem in Cuban society in these
complex times.

This objective encompasses a desire to
examine the existence of this problem within present-day Cuban reality;
making clear that it is not simply a case of inherited burdens, but
rather is something that our society is still capable of generating; and
calling attention to the danger that racism and discrimination could
again take root as part of the macro consciousness in today’s society.

The fundamental problems that we run up
against regarding the subject of race include ignorance about it,
continual avoidance of the topic, as well insufficient treatment of the
subject. Many people feel that it is not worth talking about this topic.

In Desafíos de la problemática racial en
Cuba[2]
, which this article summarizes, my aim was to develop a model for
studying and researching this subject – in order to fill the need to
theorize about it – and to examine the scope and form in which many
phenomena are studied at present. In reality, with the exception of some
of the investigative works of the Anthropology Center of CITMA [Ministry
of Science, Technology, and Environment], which are still unpublished,[3]
we did not fimd earlier studies that are worthy of mention
regarding either of those two aims. The vast majority of
the Anthropology Center studies are the fruit of very praiseworthy
research that has gotten caught up in the whirlwind of bureaucracy,
ignorance, and fear of publicizing the findings. [4]

It might seem that racism and discrimination
had disappeared from Cuban society. At least that is what many believed.
But the economic crisis of the end of the 1980s and beginning of the
1990s, with its strong traces of a social crisis, caused racism to
resurface with the virulence that can be expected from a problem that,
having been seen as solved, in fact was not. To imagine it had been
solved was a form of the worst kind of pure idealism.

Racism and racial discrimination was
eliminated from the institutional frameworks of the state and the
government with the triumph of the Revolution in 1959. But the
phenomenon maintained a toehold in the family, individual attitudes, and
some institutions, and today there is the danger of its reestablishment
in the macro consciousness of Cuban society. And this could take place
through mechanisms that inject prejudice and negative racial stereotypes
into the population, as well as through the dynamics of relations
between the formal institutions and the informal networks of power.[5]

Therefore, we need to take stock of this
phenomenon. We need to examine the mechanisms through which it spreads
and how to help design tools that allow us fight it. In this regard I
begin from a series of premises.

Racism arose from slavery. In the Americas
slavery took the form of color. Blacks, most of the time poor, were
brought in the slave ships from the west coast of Africa and turned into
slaves. It did not take long for the enslavement of some human beings to
be justified on the basis of their being black.

For generations, blacks and their descendants
occupied the lowest rung in Cuban society – first colonial society and
then neocolonial society. And we cannot expect that in a little less
than a half-century since its triumph, the Revolution could fully lift
them out of their situation of inferiority. All the more so if we
consider that owing to certain historic vicissitudes, of all the social
problems that the Revolution tackled since 1959, the racial question may
have been the theme on which there has been the least progress.

We should not confuse the degree of social
justice achieved by all the racial groups that make up our society today
with the disappearance of racism, because racism is a very complex,
multidimensional, and multicausal matter that does not disappear solely
through achievement of higher levels of social justice. Cuba is a
tangible example of that.

In the years immediately following the
triumph of the Revolution, social, economic, and political conditions
emerged that practically made “color” disappear from the
considerations of the typical Cuban, conditions which, in turn, also
encouraged an idealistic view on the part of the political leadership as
well as the majority of the citizenry – including the vast majority of
blacks – that it was possible to forget about racism.

In 1959, the chief of the Revolution had
frontally and very forcefully attacked the existing racial
discrimination, which had been a direct inheritance from republican
Cuba. However, not long afterwards, the language changed, the case was
seen as “closed,” and in 1962 the matter was declared solved. After
that a long period of silence ensued.

In practice, the subject was no longer spoken
of, until it reappeared in the second half of the 1980s, when the
political leadership itself raised it. The more complex conditions that
had encouraged silence concerning the subject of race gave way to the
economic and political shockwaves of the end of the 1980s and the
beginning of the 1990s, giving rise to a more realistic vision about
what had actually occurred with racism, which encouraged a more
objective and critical analysis of the situation.

Proclaiming in 1962 that the problem of
racial discrimination and racism had been solved was an error of
idealism and wishful thinking. As a direct result of that, the subject
of race has become the most avoided and ignored topic in our social
reality. A significant segment of our intelligentsia pays it no
attention and does not even deem it worthy of consideration, as a result
of which there are even major differences among our intellectuals over
where we stand in terms of the consolidation of the nation and its
culture. However, speaking scientifically, I do not think there can be
the slightest doubt that when we talk about “race” in Cuba – even
though this is a social invention – we are talking about culture and
nation.

Moreover, turning the subject into a taboo,
removing it from all social and political arenas, gave rise to a social
environment that made it more difficult to refer to racism. Those who
brought it up were ideologically and politically repressed. In the
sphere of culture the subject of race was still broached to a degree,
but from the standpoint of the sciences it was impossible to do research
on it, and especially to write about it. According to the prevailing
view at that time, in the midst of the political confrontation of those
years, anyone who critically analyzed racism was playing into the hands
of those who wanted to socially divide Cubans, and it earned them the
epithet of being a racist or a divider, or both.

If you don’t deal with “skin color” as
what it is, a historical variable of social differentiation among
Cubans, you can forget that blacks, whites, and mestizos did not start
from the same place in taking advantage of the opportunities that the
Revolution provided them. So it was overlooked that many of the poor
were black, which represents an additional disadvantage, even within
present-day Cuban society.

Color exerted its influence and even though
blacks and mestizos were treated in exactly the same manner as poor
whites, they remained at a greater disadvantage. Later it was shown that
it was not enough to be born in the same hospital, to attend the same
school and the same recreation center, if some children return to a
tenement, to a marginal neighborhood, while others have a substantial
house, parents earning good salaries and much better living conditions,
conditions that do not characterize the immense majority of nonwhites,
and especially blacks. The neighborhoods are different, as are the
families and their living standards.

And although black and white children may
have the same opportunities, this does not mean that all will be equally
capable of overcoming the historic starting points bequeathed by their
family, living conditions, neighborhood, etc. Unfortunately, social
policies at the time of the triumph of the Revolution did not take skin
color into account, with consequences that must now be corrected.

Other subjects are useful for exploring a
series of problems that seriously affect the racial balance in the
social, educational, and cultural spheres.

In those years, in the context of the needs
of the struggle against imperialism, excessive priority was given to
questions related to the national identity, and matters of cultural
identity were often given short shrift. In that context, racism and
discrimination were also fed by the stereotypes and prejudices against
cultures originating from Africa. The upshot of this was that the
dominance of so-called “white Hispanicism” still retained its hold
in our culture, despite the efforts made to reemphasize the values of
the African presence within the national culture.
Although we see a high degree of integration in this culture, racism and
white dominance still leave their mark upon it. This type of situation
can reflect a strong component of prejudices and negative stereotypes
regarding the values of cultures coming from Africa; although there is
also a significant economic component, given that virtually all the
African countries are poor.

In addition, unfortunately an ideopolitical
atmosphere developed in Cuba wherein defining oneself racially is
frowned upon. This affected the dynamics of personal identity, which
must function as an integrated system, whose components, valued
individually, are so important in fighting social perversions such as
racism. A person must first know who he is before he can have the
possibility of being part of some other thing. The consciousness of
individuals cannot be subsumed within the national consciousness; they
make up an integrated system in which the whole does not function
without the parts.

But this implicitly implies a strong respect
for diversity, which has been lacking in Cuban society. Diversity is the
objective, one with which we grapple every day. Unity is an unrealizable
goal if it is not built within the context of diversity, a vital aspect
if we are to be able to uproot racism from our social and cultural
reality.

Blacks and mestizos in Cuba, with very rare
exceptions, do not have a genealogical tree and cannot trace their
surnames to Africa or to Spain. In particular, the identity of blacks
has always been under strong assault. Blacks have had to navigate a road
mined by racial discrimination and nonrecognition of their values. Even
when the economic level of a black might have been similar to that of a
white, that did not save him from being racially discriminated against.
This indicates that we are not simply dealing with an economic question.

With a certain amount of help white escapes
from poverty and his color helps him escape being discriminated against
for being poor. However, the other one carries the color of his skin
with him. Therefore, even though he might escape poverty, he would
continue to be excluded. What adaptation would allow the black to leave
discrimination behind; under what color could he hide? That is why
although pulling him out of poverty might be difficult; achieving the
conditions so that he is not discriminated against is even more
difficult. These conditions are not just economic. They go much further.

One point that adds to the problems of the
identity of blacks is that they tend not to have a recognized history.
We have not been able to get beyond a version of our written history in
which the black and the mestizo, but especially the black, are scarcely
mentioned. With very few exceptions, found in independent works, we
almost completely lack a social history of blacks and mestizos in Cuba
that would be comparable, above all, with the one that exists for the
white population. This situation affects all of Cuban society, which is
unable to develop an integral, realistic view of its historic
development and therefore not infrequently muddles along with a
distorted image of the true role that each racial group played in the
formation of the culture and the nation.

The way power is distributed in present-day
Cuban society does not go beyond what existed prior to 1959; within
society white dominance is still forcefully expressed, especially at the
level of what is called the “new economy.” This is especially
evident in the absence of blacks in the upper leadership levels of the
state, government, and institutions of civil society in general, although
not in the party structure. A recent example is that there is not
one single black among the fourteen provincial chairs of People’s
Power.

This is in complete contradiction to the
leadership policy put forward by the Party in 1985, which is a long way
from being realized in terms of racial representation. The matter is
certainly much more complicated than the question of whether or not
there might be blacks and mestizos in all the positions, but undoubtedly
what is happening seriously affects the participation of nonwhites in
the structures of power.

The problems related to “whitening” still
exist within our societal reality. What else would explain why so many
people who are not white are unwilling to identify themselves that way?
This distorts the census figures and moves the question of race into a
realm of deception and hypocrisy, making it absurd to think that
mestizism might be the solution, when what has to be mixed is various
forms of consciousness in order to create a consciousness that makes
color disappear so that, as Nicolas Guillen says, we come to “Cuban
color.” The attitude of many black or mestizo people toward their own
pigmentation indicates that they do not find it advantageous to identify
themselves as such.

Other aspects that are part of how
present-day Cuban society presents itself ideologically are also
affected, and these spheres also suffer from the imbalance in racial
representation. We have a prime example in national television, where
the number of blacks and mestizos in front of the cameras is very low.
It is seen in the nearly total absence of blacks or mestizos in leading
positions on our educational channels. The “challenge of the
paradigms” exists, which requires that there be a balanced
representation, especially on television, which has such an influence in
providing role “models” and requires that all racial groups be
represented.

The subject of race is not dealt with in
school. This can result in a profound and dangerous dichotomy between
scholastic education and social reality. We are not preparing our young
people to deal with what they later find when they go out into the
streets. Things do not pass into the culture unless they are introduced
in the schools, and this is an important flaw in our education regarding
a subject of vital importance. Our curricula and educational programs
are still characterized by full-blown Occidentalism. African and Asian
cultures are basically absent from the curriculum. As a result, students
do not receive an integral and balanced education as members of a
monoethnic and multiracial society, so when they leave the classroom we
cannot be sure that they understand the roots of Cuban culture, much
less the nation’s real history. In the majority of cases they have a
Manichean and stereotyped vision of the most important aspects of that
history. Not to mention that they ought to know who Aponte was, the
history of the so-called Little War of 1912, and the Party of the
Independents of Color.

As I said earlier, Cuban scientific work has
barely begun to focus on the question of race. In the course of these
nearly fifty years of the revolutionary process, almost all of the most
important intellectual work on this subject, from the perspective of the
social and human sciences, has been done outside Cuba.[6]
This is a weakness because we have almost totally handed over a vital
aspect of our reality, with the resulting dangers that ensue for our
scientific and cultural development and for the political and
ideological struggle in defense of our social goals. Today in Cuba we
have various challenges regarding this subject, which we must confront
very seriously.

Trying to gain a fundamental understanding of
the context of this problem – which produces such concern and
prejudices – a problem that has for so long been ignored, swept under
the rug, forgotten, neglected, and even repressed, has given rise to a
very complicated situation if we consider it in the framework of
political policies. There is no well-rounded understanding of the
situation by all the institutions, social and political organizations,
or leading sectors of the state apparatus. At times there is not even an
acceptance that the problem exists. Instead we see resistance. As a
result it is virtually impossible to predict the reactions that dealing
with it openly might generate. In this regard we see attitudes that run
the gamut from a totally cynical approach, to fear and ignorance, all
the way to the most heavy-handed denial of its existence.

Not dealing with a problem of such importance
to our reality would continue to engender bewilderment, ignorance, and
social discomfort in those who suffer the ill, whether directly or as a
result of their having acquired an antidiscriminatory ethic. It would
lead to a level of social hypocrisy that would end up turning the racial
problem into an endemic ill, from which Cuban society could not recover,
with consequences for societal coexistence, the nation, and Cuban
culture. This is something that we must not leave to future generations.
What kind of a basic overall culture can we have in a society that
retains negative racial stereotypes, discrimination based on skin color,
and racism? Society must come up with an integrated strategy to struggle
against negative racial stereotypes, discrimination, and racism in
today’s Cuba. Such a strategy would start off from various
assumptions, which I will summarize below.

This is a problem that Cuban social and
economic statistics cannot continue ignoring. We must not pass over skin
color and deal with social phenomena solely on the basis of classifying
the population according to sex and age. Cuba is not Sweden or Holland.
Skin color has historically been – and continues to be – a factor of
social differentiation within the Cuban population. Race or skin color,
class and gender, go hand in hand in the country’s history. Skin
color, social differences, poverty, imbalances in the distribution of
power, discrimination, lack of empowerment, negative racial stereotypes,
and racism have always gone together in the Island’s history, and this
has still not been overcome. What country are we talking about if we do
not consider color as a fundamental trait in our population? What
democracy can we speak of if one segment of our population continues
being discriminated against because of skin color?

This is a problem for all
of society, not solely for blacks, whites, and mestizos. This means that
it is something everyone has to solve. To do that, in the first place,
to lay out an effective working strategy, people must be made conscious
that the problem exists. They need to fundamentally understand the place
that history reserved for each racial group; to realize that there is
racism on the part of whites as well as blacks; a racism that stresses
assigning each “their rightful place” flowing from of a structure of
classes and power that allowed some to discriminate against others; to
understand that the response to these differences cannot be to try to
maintain a social dynamic based on prejudice, stereotypes, mutual
discrimination and debt, but rather on the understanding of history and
on an attitude of not making concessions to these evils and melding
consciousness in order to uproot these evils from our culture and the
Cuban way of life.

Only by openly dealing with the question can
we put an end to the ignorance, cynicism, and hypocrisy that still lie
below the surface when the question of race is discussed. Dealing with
it openly can also help to develop an atmosphere in which it would be
impossible to withdraw into some social space to practice racial
discrimination. Certainly the subject of race implicitly contains a
strong element of social division, but the only way to fight for a real,
solid, integrated national culture is by not ignoring it. That is how we
can build a culture within which all the forms of dominance that were
spawned by the racist culture inherited from colonialism and capitalism
can be overcome, a culture in which each racial group has its place
within present-day Cuban society.

We should no longer acquiesce in avoiding the
subject of race in order to maintain a form of harmonious social
coexistence, because that is a false harmony, riddled with hypocrisy and
prone to making concessions to racism and discrimination, as well as a
context in which those who choose to maintain their prejudices and
discrimination will always be able to find some place to do so.

Nor should we accept the idea that attacking
racism and discrimination weakens Cuban society. Rather it is the
complete opposite. As a point of fact, not fighting this evil is what
divides society, weakens its culture, affects the national identity, and
places the Revolution’s social goals at serious risk, goals that must
encompass nothing less than unity forged within diversity. The subject
must be forcefully brought back into public discourse, it must be
publicized, and it must be taken up in the political and mass
organizations, so that it becomes what it should be and in fact is: a
fundamental aspect of the already-launched battle of ideas.

[5]Institutional
racism does not exist in Cuba, meaning it is not built into the
politico-social system or the institutions as was the case before
1959. The revolutionary process, with its antidiscriminatory ethos,
drove racism back into what are now its principal niches: the
family, the individual consciousness of many people, the so-called
“emergent economy,” and some exclusionary groupings, where it
still exists because the definitive battle against racism which is
now called for did not take place. This shortcoming led to its
concealment, only to reemerge now, when the contacts with the market
economy, the reemergence of inequalities, and the whole economic and
social deterioration that resulted from the crisis of the 1990s are
being felt.

There are many sides to the conflict between Cuba and the United States, mainly if we take into account the American political interest in subverting Cuba’s revolutionary society, be that by attempting to spearhead social processes in the island, or robbing Cuban political leaders of their function at the front of internal changes in order to subvert the socialist regime.

Drafted in 2004 and 2006, the so-called “transition documents” display unlimited criticism of every process under way in the island, seeking to project the worst possible image of Cuba’s overall national life.

Small surprise then that a given internal behavior is fostered in order to undermine the progress of the Cuba revolutionary process, engaged as it is in a number of pressing challenges. Among the topics covered by those documents is the race issue, pioneered by certain alleged scholars who, for all intents and purposes, are nothing but henchmen, subordinated to the U.S. administration’s anti-Cuban policy. Some, not all, of the black men from the other side of the Florida Strait try to portray Cuban blacks and people of mixed race as victims in their own land. It goes without saying that the victimizers are none other than the Cuban state, government and Communist Party, since there’s a distinct trend to tag those living on this side of the political spectrum as little more than sheep or stupid people devoid of any personal will.

Involved in this endeavor to manipulate the race issue in Cuba as a target of political subversion are individuals like
Enrique Patterson, who links this topic either to matters of governance or to an anti-establishment political potential he claims to be boiling among nonwhite Cubans. Enrique Patterson was a former professor of Philosophy with Havana University’s Marxism-Leninism Department before he left the country in 1990, to reappear shortly afterwards at the LASA Congress in Washington with two officials from, it seemed, the State Department. Who was covering his expenses and the purpose of his presence there may be easily deduced. Settled in Miami, he is now devoted to writing about the race issue in Cuba, his way of thinking a perfect match with the aims of the U.S. Government.

A similar role as manipulator is played by Ramón Colás, leader of a Mississippi-based Race Relations Project, and the journal Islas, until recently in pursuit of contacts to produce materials on the race issue from inside Cuba.

The Miami Herald, in turn, continues to be a storing chamber of every article published in the United States on this subject.

It’s true that much remains to be done in Cuba before social inequality disappears once and for all as a problem still hovering over white and black people alike. The latter are more affected, mainly as a result of the uneven historical backgrounds which the various races comprising today’s Cuban society had in 1959.

It would be foolish and all but anti-scientific to believe that 450 years of colonialism and neocolonial exploitation can be erased in almost 50 years of Revolution, radical though this process may have been.

In line with the social policies enforced by the Revolution, everyone's right to education, health, social security and employment was recognized. This measure benefited all poor citizens, the vast majority of whom were black or from mixed racial descent.

Not that everything is to our complete satisfaction. It is also a fact that, despite being amply addressed by the top leader of the Revolution in 1959, this issue was not properly followed-up on and was, instead, hushed-up in later years, given the prevailing opinion that an egalitarian social policy which treated all races the same, and a far-reaching set of principles conducive to full equality for all Cubans were enough to solve these problems. This premise was totally unmindful of the terrible fallout that such assumptions could bring in tow both from the material and subjective points of view.

We must bear in mind, that in the early 1960s the U.S. government started a true war of aggression against the Cuban Revolution. The race issue began to draw attention as a potential bone of contention among the revolutionary forces, taking into account the difficult battles they were expected to face.

However, without agreeing with the so-called “theory of the one-eyed man” who is king in the land of the blind, I don’t think any country in this hemisphere, including the United States itself, has done as much for justice, egalitarianism and racial equality as Cuba.

Likewise, I have not heard, since before 1959, of any government allied to nonwhite people, or any state or government from which those ethnic groups have received more than just demagogic speeches. Few, if any, concrete actions were made to take them out of their deprived areas and to give them free medical care and education, real hopes of decent housing, a good job, and personal dignity, let alone a chance to be treated on an equal footing when faced with justice. This is a reality still suffered by most African-Americans in the United States.

Black people in Cuba struggle everyday in open spaces, of which there are many, without letting themselves be deceived by those who should first of all relinquish that racist, poor replica of a republic. It was designed to look like the Cuba of the 1950s, which the Cuban-American extreme right has built for the Miami-based black Cubans. Most of them are yet to leave behind the same place they had back in Cuba’s neo-republican days, only 50 years later. And forget about black people’s progress regarding access to power, only available to the wealthy whites, much like it was in Cuba before the Revolution. Yet, other forms of discrimination still hang over Cuban whites who, regardless of their wealth, stopped being “white” to become “Hispanics” when they arrived in the United States.

Therefore, just like Carlos Moore, many admit to the presence of racism and discrimination within the Cuban population in the United States.

==================

On the other hand, Cuban nonwhites work from a vantage point because they’re aware of their status. That is why we can say with absolute certainty that the number of black people in Cuba who make it to the power structures increases by the day, as does the number of white people willing to share such power. After all, that was one of the Cuban Revolution’s goals. That’s the true platform for assuring equality, and the rest will be solved in good time, helped by the existing political dynamics and the will of both Cuban black people and the vast majority of whites. Not that black Cubans are living in a dream world, thinking everything will come as a godsend: they know that rain and snow are the only things they can expect from heaven; everything else calls for a lot of wrestling.

The main battle facing Cubans of black and mixed racial ancestry, then, is to keep building the society which opened so many doors to them, and also, why not, share the power with the nonwhites in a milieu marked by unique realities and opportunities. This is unquestionably more feasible in today’s Cuba than anywhere else, at least in our hemisphere. And again, I’m including the United States where, despite its civil rights movement and matchless wealth, 90% of African-Americans still live below the poverty level.

What’s the plan of those in the United States, and particularly in Miami, who sell the victim’s speech to Cubans in the island? Plainly and simply, to burden them with forms of struggle that never worked for them in order to establish organizations, factions and sects of discontentment as they sweeten them with USAID money, only to put them to work in the end for the heralds of racism in Washington and Miami, a sorrowful mission already undertaken by some U.S.-based black Cubans.

I don’t think they do so without knowing they are betraying their fellow human beings; it’s just that lining their pockets is more important. Like it or not, they have thus become pawns of the same Miami mafia whose only aim is to recover whatever properties and privileges they left in the island. Paradox: those privileges included discriminating against black people in Cuba.

Actually, there in the background of their speech –the victim’s– lies the intention that these nonwhite Cubans work for counterrevolutionary subversion, that is, to undo the political, social and economic process which has made it precisely possible for those ethnic groups to attain a social status in their country that very few of them could only dream of, the existing problems notwithstanding.

The bottom line is that Cuban blacks and people of mixed race have no use for such “victim’s speech”, nor do they need it. Therefore, those in the U.S. would better use their time and effort to come up with a speech of their own so they can help themselves survive in the midst of the racism which is characteristic of American society and especially of Miami.

In Cuba we know exactly who’s a friend and who’s an enemy.

*Esteban Morales: Doctor of Sciences, University Professor, Economist and Political Scientist specialized in topics related to U.S. economics and foreign policy. He is currently with Havana University’s Center for U.S. Studies (CESEU).

Then Nation of Islam minister and spokesman Malcolm X
being interviewed by Cuban journalist Renaldo Penalver
Moral during discussions in Harlem in the early 1960s.
Originally uploaded by Pan-African
News Wire File Photos

By Esteban Morales
Cubanow

In September 1960, Malcolm X became one of those world
personalities linked to the Cuban Revolution, not only for his
revolutionary position, and his unyielding solidarity with Cuba, but
also by being linked very early with the top leader of the Cuban
Revolution, Fidel Castro, at the Theresa Hotel, in Harlem, New York.

Forty-two years has passed since February 21st, 1965, when one of the
brightest and most rational leaders of the 20th century was murdered.

He was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on May 25th, 1925 and christened as
Malcolm Little. His father was a Baptist pastor; follower of Marcus
Garvey’s ideals, and his mother was born on the Caribbean island of
Grenada.

He adopted his muslin name, Hajj Malik El Shabazz, after his
pilgrimage to Mecca but was known worldwide as Malcolm X.

His social struggle was extremely intense and hard; by different and
unconventional ways for his times, he reached a theoretical conception
and a strategy for the struggle of Black North Americans, thus
emerging as a leader in the world struggle against imperialism.

Malcolm X lived in Boston and New York, where he was arrested after
having participated in larceny, drugs, gambling, and other
misdemeanors. He was imprisoned in a Massachusetts jail until 1952.

During his prison stay he joined the Muslim organization, Nation of
Islam, and it was then he took the name by which he became universally
known: Malcolm X.

Prison had a positive influence on his youthful personality, a process
in which his activist Muslim comrades helped him. Released, still only
27, he decided to change the erratic course of his previous life.

One year after being released he was appointed a Minister of the
Nation of Islam organization.

By that time, the clearest idea of the meaning of religion for Malcolm
X, in the context of his political ideas, was eloquently expressed in
the following: “If I must accept a religion which doesn’t let me
fight for my people, to hell with it” (See: Malcolm X speaks:
speeches, interviews and statements. Pathfinder Press, United States,
2002, p. 114, source of quotations used in this essay which are,
however, retranslated from the Spanish.)

In 1963, Malcolm X lived through a very hard period in his political
life, when he had to make the decision to leave the Nation of Islam,
the organization to which he owed so much and that had so heavily
influenced his initial training.

He made such a decision when he realized, from a private conversation,
that its head and spiritual father, Elijah Muhammad, whom he had
faithfully followed, exhibited morally inadequate personal behaviour.
For his part, he reached the deep conviction that inside the
organization the role of leaders was only to look after the interests,
frequently spurious, of its top leader and besides, he had experienced
its total lack of interest for political activity among North American
Black people.

In fact, the Nation of Islam was not consistent with the principles it
preached, in the midst of its top leader’s abuse of power and
authority. This continually involved the organization’s hierarchy in
covering up shameful actions to its economic benefit, coordinated
through the KKK and other racist and fascist-like organizations.

From the moment Malcolm X left the organization, over such
compromising reasons, he became a danger, both for the
organization’s leadership as well as for the organization itself.

In fact, the Nation of Islam, with its bourgeois nationalist tendency
and a leadership continually engaged in and committed to attaining
space within the economy of the US capitalist system, was quite the
opposite of what Malcolm X expected from any organization seeking to
struggle for Black liberation.

Malcolm X intended to overcome such mentioned faults when he founded
his two organizations: the Afro-American Unity Organization (AAUO),
initiated in New York, in 1964, and what was called the Muslim Mosque,
shortly afterwards. His intention was to cover both the religious and
political concerns of black communities.

Malcolm X has frequently been labelled racist and violent. Many of
those who don’t know him, or those who know him very well,
especially these last, try to slander him, by comparing him with
Martin Luther King; considering Malcolm the “red” demon, and King
the “black” angel. A Manichean position widely used to introduce
much confusion in understanding the real role of both personalities
and their place within the Black struggle.

Malcolm X did not judge anyone by the color of their skin. Even when
he spoke about Blacks, many times he was referring to non-white people
(saying: “Blacks”, “Browns”, “Yellows” “Reds”, etc) to
give a comprehensive view of the problem of white colonization of
these peoples, in some ways slaves in their own land; like the North
American Black, he never got tired of repeating, they didn’t arrive
on the Mayflower. These concepts allowed him to expose the common
enemy and forge the alliance and solidarity which has to exist between
all the exploited of the world, Afro-Americans, Chinese, Indians,
Latin Americans, etc.

This concept set him apart from either from the black or white racism
affecting so many organizations at that time, and brought him closer
to a true concept of what the struggle against any sort of racism and
discrimination should be, including discrimination against women, an
aspect to which he also paid attention.

Although Malcolm X did not worship violence, he was always against
Blacks being called upon to be peaceful, when the most ruthless
violence was used openly and continually against them. So he said
about this: “ I myself would accept non-violence if it were
consistent, if it were intelligent, if everyone were non-violent, if
we were always non-violent. But I’m never going to accept… any
sort of non-violence, unless the whole world is non-violent”. (op
cit. p. 142). Undoubtedly, one would be a fool to agree to be
non-violent within a society overwhelmed by all sorts of violence
against its Black and non-white populations, as North American society
is even today, to try to inculcate an ethic which neither the police,
nor the courts, and not even the government itself, put into practice
in the United States of America.

He did not support violence, but he deeply understood that it was
unavoidable, to the extent that its origin came from the marked
intention of keeping Black people exploited at any cost, permanently
condemning them to being second and third rate citizens in their own
land. All the mechanisms, authorities and instruments of the North
American political system collaborated towards this aim.

So Malcolm X was neither racist nor violent. It’s North American
society that day after day is more and more racist and violent.
Despite that, it can’t be said that the Civil Rights struggle made
no progress at all.

From the beginning, Malcolm X was linked not only to the personal
consequences of the Black struggle in the United States, but he also
paid careful attention to the struggle of other oppressed peoples
inside the U.S. and at world level. With his travels basically through
Asia and Africa, he kept on enriching this perspective.

That’s to say, Malcolm X, from his origins as a revolutionary
leader, also put forward in his training the strong internationalist
component which always characterized him. So within his thought as
well as his political action, the Black struggle in the United States
was only part of the whole revolutionary endeavour of the liberation
struggle at world level.

Even more, Malcolm X did not consider himself North American, but a
victim of North Americanism. In 1964, he said in Cleveland, Ohio, “I
speak as victim of this North American system and I see the United
Sates through the victim’s eyes. I don’t see an American dream. I
see an American nightmare”.

For Malcolm X, the North American system was a rotten, corrupt,
exploiting one, which enlisted Blacks in the economic and political
mechanisms of exploitation, discrimination and moral degradation.

He never used the expression “Our Government” nor spoke about
“Our Armed Forces”, rather expressed himself “Don’t deal with
Uncle Sam as if he were your friend... if he were your friend you
wouldn’t be a second-rate citizen... we have no friends in
Washington”.

Such starting points to qualify North American society make it very
clear that North American Black people are really a people exploited
and discriminated against within their own country, because the white
people have appropriated it, leaving the immense majority of North
American Blacks in a situation similar to Third World exploited
peoples. Such terms also served to make him an extremely
“dangerous” person, continually persecuted by the North American
Special Services, until his assassination on February 21st, 1965.

With the introduction of “Black Capitalism” during Lyndon B.
Johnson’s administration, and the demands achieved, as a result of
the Civil Rights struggle, the situation would change; improvements in
recognition of economic, social and political rights for Blacks
arrived. The Civil Rights struggle hadn’t been in vain but the
changes that took place were limited, within a capitalist and
essentially racist society.

With Blacks enlisting in capitalist dynamics and using “Affirmative
Action”, a new context emerged, inside of which a Black upper middle
class, subordinate to the white oligarchy, became a paradigm for the
huge majority of Black people. And the huge majority of Black people
would follow that “carrot on the stick”, and the final result is
that currently from 5% to 7 % (no more) of Black people enjoy a
subordinate class position, exploiting Blacks themselves and also
enjoying privileges of the system. Meanwhile, more than 90% of that
population remain under the same conditions of exploitation and
discrimination that haven’t substantially changed today.

In Malcolm X’s speeches, interviews and statements, it’s quite
clear that he didn’t share the strategy of the Civil Rights
struggle. He considered this kind of struggle was not the correct one.
But, did this mean that Martin Luther King wasn’t right? In reality,
it’s a very hard question to answer. So we prefer to focus on the
drawbacks that both forms of struggle presented and the problems
stemming from the national and international context in which such
battles had to be fought.

Undoubtedly, Malcolm X was a more radical leader with a broader vision
than King; but based only on this is it possible to affirm that the
former was right? Not always in politics does radicalism equal the
triumph of the strategy for struggle based on it. Neither, if a
strategy for struggle failed, does it mean it was wrong. There are too
many circumstances converging in a process of political struggle to be
able to arrive at conclusions so easily.

Notwithstanding, the truth is that both strategies of struggle had
their drawbacks.

What were those strategies? We’ll look briefly.

• For Martin Luther King, the Black struggle should have
concentrated on claiming from North American society the civil rights
corresponding to being part of the North American nation. Among these
rights, as the fundamental one: to be treated as equals. This struggle
was understood as strictly within U.S. territory, although not
excluding the possibility of receiving international solidarity even
though the form of struggle didn’t facilitate it. The method of
struggle should be completely peaceful.

• For Malcolm X, the Black struggle didn’t exclude claiming their
civil rights, but it should basically be concentrated on strengthening
their communities, their political and religious organizations, in
order to demand the rightful place of Blacks within North American
society. This struggle was focused on the basis of what Malcolm called
“Black Nationalism”; that is, considering Black people as a
subjugated nation within its own country and the existing capitalist
system as its enemy. Because of this, his struggle was part of the
struggle of all the exploited of the world. The struggle should be
peaceful, but not exclude the use of violence, if imposed by the
exploiters.

Malcolm X considered that the United States, as well as Black people,
had a very serious problem: Blacks were undesirable and the tendency
was to treat them as second and third class citizens.

For Malcolm X, neither the Democratic or Republican parties
represented an alternative in the search for support for the struggle
within North American society.

The foregoing was expressed as: “...Every time you see yourself in
the mirror, whether you’re black, brown, red or yellow, you’re
seeing a person who’s a serious problem for the United States,
because they do not want you here”.

So for him all these people should unite. But not only within the
United States, rather with all their kind all over the world, and
raise a great movement of vindication that he called “Black
Revolution”.

This revolution had a common enemy. This enemy was the white
colonizer, always European: Spaniards in America, British in Africa,
French, Belgians, Portuguese, Germans; all whites, who had moved all
over the world with their colonial enterprises, exploiting all the
American, Asian and African peoples. These were the imperialist
colonizers who did the same to everybody, including North American
Blacks, those who didn’t arrive on the Mayflower, but on slave
ships.

Conceiving of the North American Black population as it really was: a
mass that hadn’t overcome its condition of slavery, unequally
exploited in relation to the rest of the population, white workers,
and discriminated against in the context of social life, Malcolm X was
able to reach another very important conclusion: in reality it was a
people suffering under a situation that didn’t differ at all from
that of the exploited in the Third World, in Asia, Africa and Latin
America, only that for North American Blacks this was happening
shamefully inside the richest society of the world capitalist system,
and of the whole known social universe.

At the same time, Malcolm X takes on pointing out the strong link
existing between Blacks in the U.S. and Blacks in Africa, the
continent from which the slaves were brought to North America. This
underlined a close relationship between the ways the Blacks in Africa
and in the United States were treated.

Because of this, according to Malcolm X, civil rights weren’t an
adequate or real platform for the struggle of U.S. Blacks to win their
demands, since they were limited to the national plane. This implied
that the natural allies of North American Blacks stayed on the
margins; something very convenient for the North American white
exploiting elites.

Because of this, Malcolm X considered that the struggle of North
American Blacks should be focused on the basis of human rights,
because these had a more universal character, as well as the advantage
of connecting the United States Black struggle with that of all the
exploited at the world level. Thus it also offered a platform that
permitted projecting internal battles into the debates on
international stages like the United Nations Organization. While Civil
Rights confined the struggle to the national plane, that is, inside
the framework of North American sovereignty, reducing everything to an
internal scenario where the North American oligarchy could get out of
an international debate on exploitation and discrimination, besides
controlling and limiting it to a purely domestic question. Like the
Democratic Party always tried to do.

Such political clarity in Malcolm X’s approach concerning the
framework in which to develop the Black struggle raised it to the
stage of the anti-imperialist struggle, because it was solidly linked
to the struggle of all the world’s exploited peoples, as well as to
the complex aspect of understanding the existence of a common enemy,
only differentiated by the different national masks it wears..

This was also to take the struggle to the level of necessary
international solidarity between those directly exploited by their
native oligarchies, which are nothing but subordinate classes of the
international-trans-national oligarchy, inside of which the U.S.
bourgeois monopoly class is the most powerful, best articulated and
connected at world level. From this perspective, the exploitation and
discrimination suffered by Blacks in the United States comes as an
indirect result of U.S. imperialist action.

As well, such an approach offered the objective, practical and
theoretical basis that allowed responding to the essence of a struggle
that, all in all, must be global, although it takes place at a
national level.

These ideas convert Malcolm X into a world leader of the
anti-imperialist struggle. So he can’t be labelled only a leader of
North American Black people. The truth is Malcolm perceived very early
that keeping the Black struggle within the Civil Rights framework
could only benefit North American white exploiting elites, who had
early devised and put into practice a model of assimilation of the
Black struggle into the dynamics of U.S. capitalism. Just as they’re
doing now, faced with the reality that Hispanics are becoming the
largest minority in North America.

These reasons allow us to affirm as well that the demands achieved by
Blacks, as a result of their struggle for civil rights - neither few,
nor unimportant – can’t be deeply understood if they’re not also
seen as the high price the white elite was forced to pay in order to
“calm down” Blacks and succeed in involving them in the economic
and political machinery of capitalism in the United States.

When analyzing the matter of current poverty within that society we
see clear evidence that the Civil Rights struggle did not mean a
significant, essential change in the situation of Blacks in the U.S.

The United States is the richest society in the world, although the
one having the most concentration of wealth and, as a consequence, the
worst distribution.

Thus, the wealthiest 10% of the North American population owns 81.8%
of real estate wealth, 81.2% of stock shares, and 88.0% of bonds. (Legt
Business Observer, No. 72,,USA, April 1996, p.5 ).

But the situation becomes even worse when we know that only 1% of the
U.S. population owns 60% of the shares and 40% of the total wealth.
(The Ecology of Commerce, New York, Harper Business, 1993 ).

Then let’s look at some considerations, more particularly and
closely related to the topic of “race”.

More than in any other developed capitalist society, poverty in the
United States is clearly identified with a power structure, supported
by various pillars of social, cultural and racial stratification
formed from colonial times up to the definitive establishment of
capitalism within North American society, and that have not been able
to be overcome. In North American society there is a social structure
in which, in general terms, “race”, class, social status and level
of poverty are structurally linked:

Theoretically, it is possible for everyone to rise up the social
scale, but, in practice, belonging to an ethnic group tends to equal
social class.

We don’t want to expand on this, but there are statistics showing
that beyond the problems of employment, health and education, other
indicators going from levels of access to education, health, home
ownership and justice enforcement, just to mention a few, work
completely against the great mass of North American Blacks.

More recently, George Bush’s (son) administration has given eloquent
examples of the measure in which the black population might be among
its priorities. Just to mention three aspects:

• The total oblivion for the racial program, “Only One America for
the 21st Century”, launched by William Clinton:

• Hurricane Katrina, that mainly devastated New Orleans, has left an
insurmountable mark amid the lack of attention paid by the Bush
administration.

• The Katrina tragedy, the most dramatic event lived by North
American society in the latest 60 years, is not even mentioned in the
2006 State of the Nation Report.

The fact that Malcolm X’s strategy was crushed by his assassination
has had disastrous consequences for Blacks in the U.S. The opportunity
was lost, and today there are not Black leaders able to change the
situation. The Black population has been definitely absorbed by the
dynamics of capitalism, and there exists very little or almost nothing
allowing a return to Malcolm X’s clear idea that the North American
Black population could strengthen itself as an integrated community,
to struggle for its place within North American society, achieving
something more than being absorbed and becoming an instrument for
“Black capitalism”, fragmented by the crumbs of social
participation that Blacks have achieved through “Affirmative
Action”, itself strongly questioned in recent years under attack as
“reverse racism”.

Blacks have lost their strength as community; they have been used as
one more sector dancing to the rhythm of music played and directed by
the white trans-national oligarchy. Their only chance now would be to
join a context of struggle, where many are unaware of the specific
aspects of the structural inferiority Blacks are kept in within U.S.
capitalist society.

Inside a society with a political system hegemonically ruled by two
parties, fragmented trade unions, and left parties without real
possibilities of taking part in the electoral game, Blacks, as a
social sector, in the huge majority, have no chance to increase their
place within the North American social structure.

Malcolm X’s assassination was the result of a group of situations
acting as a system, to eliminate a person who had become a real danger
for the ruling white oligarchy’s interests from public life in North
American society. The specific reasons justifying his physical
liquidation are linked to the following aspects:

• Only 42 when he was murdered, he had become an unquestionable
Black leader, both in the United States as well as at world level.

• His “black nationalism” strategy constituted a platform which
independently mobilized the North American Black community, relying on
their own forces, and not letting themselves be towed by capitalism
dynamics.

• The international approach and solidarity with the revolutionary
movement in Asia, Africa and Latin America, which stamped the
strategy, made North American Black people a working unit in the
anti-imperialist struggle at world level.

• He had broken with the Nation of Islam - not only over political,
but ethical disagreements, which seriously affected the action and
leadership of that organization. Then he founded organizations that
turned out to be very efficient in the objectives they pursued: the
Muslim Mosque and the OAAU, which represented a competition weighing
heavily against the Nation of Islam.

• He advocated that the United States should be understood as a
corrupt, exploiting, immoral society, which maintained an economic and
political system that always ranked Black people as second and third
rate citizens.

The truth is that Malcolm X was a much more dangerous leader than
Martin Luther King. The latter, despite his honesty, his true
dedication to the Civil Rights cause and his desire to benefit Blacks,
had remained enrolled in the mechanics of the system, and in the end
became exploited by purposes that weren’t those that had originally
inspired him, although this didn’t save his life. Martin Luther King
was a person too honest to betray his ideals, he was a honest and
unyielding fighter for his people’s rights, but he wasn’t a
revolutionary leader as such.

The 1954 Bandung Conference and the founding of the OAU (Organization
of African Unity), the latter without doubt the most prestigious
international organization of the African continent, strongly inspired
Malcolm X.

But, as Malcolm X expressed, the most important thing is “…the
motto of Afro-American Unity is by any means necessary. We don’t
believe in fighting a battle in which... our oppressors are going to
make the rules. We don’t believe we can win a battle where those who
exploit us dictate the rules. We don’t believe we can keep on
struggling trying to win the affection of those who have been
oppressing and exploiting us for so long.” (p. 200).

From being almost non citizens, because Blacks had no right to vote,
were not admitted to universities, they couldn’t join the Army, they
were scarcely hired in industry, they moved forward to second rate
citizens.

As a result of all this, the truth is today there is not a Black
movement in the United States even similar to that of the 1960’s.
Neither does there exist a Black political leadership able to attract
Blacks nationwide to a broad struggle for their demands. Almost all
the current black leaders are cogs in the North American political
system.

Notwithstanding, other considerations aside, the plain true is that
Malcolm X, both by his political clarity and his theoretical
consistence, as well as for the justice of his actions and
aspirations, more than as a leader of the Black struggle in the United
States, has been acknowledged as one of the strategists of the
revolutionary struggle against imperialism at the world level. So his
ideas and the battles he fought are still a considerable source of
experience for the Black struggle in the United States, and for all
the world’s exploited peoples.

Esteban Morales Domínguez, Dr. of Sciences
Centro de Estudios sobre los Estados Unidos (CESEU) Centre of Studies
of the United States of America (CESEU)

Excerpt
from new book, 'Race in Cuba: Essays on the revolution and racial inequality' 12/1/2012 Links: "As
a young militant in the Student Youth movement, Esteban Morales Domínguez
participated in the overthrow of the Batista regime and the triumph of the Cuban
Revolution. The revolutionaries, he understood, sought to establish a more just
and egalitarian society. But Morales, an Afro-Cuban, knew that the complicated
question of race could not be ignored, or simply willed away in a
post-revolutionary context. Today, he is one of Cuba’s most prominent Afro-Cuban
intellectuals and its leading authority on the race question."